Bulgarian Folk Dance in the United States

About two years ago I wrote a post titled:  Bulgarian Folk Dance Around the World. Recently there was something posted on the Bulgarian National Radio about the popularity of Bulgarian folklore in the United States.

Why is Bulgarian folk music so popular in the United States?  Folk dancers have been dancing to it for many years.  There was also an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.  Many settled in large cities: New York, Boston and Chicago, among others. They joined the folk dance groups, in part, because they saw like-minded people.  Another reason was homesickness...the dances brought back memories of home.

The first video features dancers from Ethnic Dance Chicago.  They have an active community on Facebook, and I found this gem from the 4th Verea Festival.  The group performs a medley of dances from the northern and Thracian folklore regions.



The next group is Ludo Mlado from the Boston area, and this is a performance from last year's Balkan Music Night, an annual event which takes place on the third Saturday in March. Here, Ludo Mlado performs a medley of dances from the Pirin region of Bulgaria.



Rosa, from Atlanta, is another group I found during my forays on the Universe of YouTube. The dance is Petrunino Horo.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

I Can't Believe They're Not Bulgarian: The Yale Women's Slavic Chorus

Bulgarian Folk Dance Around the World

Balkan Music Night 2014 (the backlinks to previous Balkan Music Night events can be found at the end of this post).

Please stop by and visit Light and Shadow, my other blog. This month's theme is Mother's Day and feminism.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.